Corporate credit markets and distress (see also credit ratings below)

Areas with a higher share of seniors have more deposits. Using this as an instrument, I show that more bank funding is associated with stronger lending, more capital-intensive economic activity locally. Effect has faded with the geographical integration of US commercial banking.

A 1991 legal ruling introduced fiduciary duty toward creditors for corporate officers in Delaware-incorporated firms. We trace the effect on distressed firms which were affected: they became more conservative, in line with a stronger regard for creditors' interests. In response, non-distressed firms incorporated in Delaware could increase leverage and have fewer covenants.Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence, Journal of Monetary Economics, 2014, with Victoria Ivashina.

When bank loan supply is low, large firms tend to issue bonds instead. We use this observation to infer the time series of the aggregate corporate loan supply. This measure is free from demand effects (bank loans and bonds being close substitutes for large firms) and to compositional shifts in debt issuance (since we track individual firms). We show that loan supply is low at times of slow growth, low bank stock prices, and tight monetary policy. A simpler account, with an application to Europe, at The European Financial Review.DATA.Reaching for Yield in the Bond Market, Journal of Finance, 2015, with Victoria Ivashina.

In many countries, poorly functioning bankruptcy procedures force viable but insolvent firms to restructure out of court, where banks may have a bargaining advantage of other creditors. We model the choice of restructuring process and derive implications for the corporate mix of bank and bond financing. Empirical patterns match the model: inefficient bankruptcy in a country is associated with less bond issuance by risky, but not by safe, borrowers there. This pattern holds for both levels and changes in bankruptcy recovery. Our results establish a link between bankruptcy reform and corporate bond markets, especially high yield markets.

European corporate loan markets have been exceptionally depressed during the European financial crisis, as evidenced by an unusually high share of bond issues in new corporate credit (holding issuer identity fixed). We show that the depth of the contraction in the loan supply is correlated with holdings of sovereign debt on bank balance sheets, both across countries and within countries, across banks. In particular, home country sovereign debt appears to use up bank financial resources: financial repression appears likely to share the blame.

Do information frictions contribute to cyclicality in corporate credit markets? We compare a Swedish bank's ability to predict defaults of its borrowers through the cycle. We find that the bank has more precise information in recessions. We conclude that information frictions in the corporate loan market likely do not contribute to cyclicality.

We analyze the unprecedented rise in covenant-light loans (loans whose covenants are not tested continuously) in the US leveraged loan market. Both in the aggregate tim series and in the cross-section at a given time, cov-lite is strongly associated with having many relatively passive investors (mutual funds and collateralized loan obligations, CLOs). we interpret this as evidence that coordination among creditors drives contracting in the loan market.

We examine portfolio rebalancing by European banks in response to the ECB's QE. In the weaker economies, banks tended to rebalance towards
riskier securities, whereas banks in healthier economies appear more likely to have increased lending. ECB working paper 2125.

Credit ratings

The rise of a third big rating agency, Fitch, provides an opportunity to examine the benefits or costs of competition in a reputation-based market. We find that a higher market share of Fitch is associated with higher and less informative ratings from the two incumbents, Moody's and S&P. This suggests that competition can aggravate conflicts of interest between users of ratings and rating agencies which are paid by issuers.

Indian rating agencies have been required to report consulting relationships and the associated financial flows from issuers. We use this setting to examine whether issuers who hire agencies for non-ratings business receive different (better) ratings than those that do not. Issuers who also hire rating agencies on average have ratings that are 0.3 higher (than the ratings they are assigned by a rating agency which they do not hire). This effect is larger when the amount of revenues generated by the consulting is higher. The better ratings are not likely to be explained by differences in perceived default risk. Vox EU blog post about the article. Harvard Law School Blog about the article.

Capital requirements for the US insurance industry's holdings off mortgage-backed securities (MBS) were no longer based on ratings, starting in 2009 (RMBS) and 2010 (CMBS). We examine the first few years of the new system, which relies on a proprietary risk measure, purchased from PIMCO and Blackrock. We show that (a) capital requirements were massively reduced (e.g. by around 80% in 2012) and (b) across securities, the new capital requirements are less related to default risk than ratings are. We conclude that the regulatory change most likely reflect forbearance/macroprudential concerns, but at the cost of a permanent reduction of capital requirements. (A previous version was entitled "Replacing Ratings").

We examine an incident when, due to a procedural mistake, S&P was shut out of rating commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) starting in mid-2011. Comparing their ratings of particular securities (CMBS tranches) to those of other agencies suggests S&P issued better ratings (closer to AAA) after the loss of market share (but not before). This evidence is consistent with theories suggesting that rating agencies can inflate ratings to gain market share.

Local Dividend Clienteles, Journal of Finance, 2011, with Zoran Ivkovic and Scott Weisbenner. Firms with more senior owners pay more dividends, consistent with policies being set to agree with owners' preferences. We use location to instrument for seniors, ruling out reverse causality. The effect is absent for very large firms.

Estimating the Effects of Large Shareholders Using a Geographic Instrument, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2011, with Henrik Cronqvist and Rudiger Fahlenbrach.We use a geographical instrument (the density of very high net worth individuals) based on tax data to instrument for the likelihood of local firms having non-institutional blockholders. We find that having a block generates lower investment, cash holdings and executive pay, but higher dividends and profitability. The public shares of firms with blockholders become less liquid.

Improving Director Elections, Harvard Business Law Review, 2013, with Guhan Subramanian.Corporate boards in the U.S. do not reflect shareholder democracy, typically consisting of incumbents nominating themselves to uncontested elections. We document the lack of competition and contest for the last ten years, and show that none of the many recent reforms (e.g., majority voting, eProxy, etc.) have been impactful in this regard.

Other Corporate Finance

Financial development, across Europe, predicts higher investment for constrained firms. The effect is absent for subsidiaries with access to internal capital markets, suggesting this is not due to variation in investment opportunities.

Taxes on corporate payout are predicted to raise the cost of equity for firms that fund investment with outside equity, but not for those that can fund investment from profits. Consistent with this, we document that countries and periods with high taxes on dividends and repurchases see investment distorted toward firms with internal cash flow. Summary in the NBER Digest

Book capters

"Reaching for yield, avoiding high yield:
the price impact"; on seasonality of the IG-HY yield difference in corporate bond markets (likely driven by regulatory capital), in the book High Yield, Future Tense (2015, ed M Fridson, NYSSA)